Logo Athletic Inc. has snared the rights to produce 1999 NBA championship locker-room T-shirts and headwear. Those licenses had belonged to Starter Corp., which gave them up when it pulled out of its NBA on-court deal months before filing for bankruptcy protection. NBA Properties Inc. has been seeking a replacement ever since and had hoped once again to package locker-room rights with the on-court licensing deal. But with the NBA Finals approaching fast, the league was forced to dole out the locker-room license separately in a one-year deal, although talks continue with Logo regarding an on-court agreement that would make the company an official supplier and licensee for authentic jerseys and shooting shirts next season.
Locker room T-shirts and caps account for $6 million to $18 million in retail sales each year, insiders say. But Logo officials said that because the license was granted so late, the company will probably miss out on some sales opportunities.
Some industry observers were surprised that the NBA did not hand the locker-room license to Champion, the league's longtime top licensee. Champion has been hit hard by decreased consumer demand for NBA replica jerseys, a trend that dates back two years, and then took another wallop during the lockout. The company has never been a leader in "hot market" special-event merchandise like locker-room T-shirts but recently created a hot market division in partnership with another company and recorded several million dollars in sales of NCAA men's basketball Final Four-related merchandise. A Champion spokesperson said the company never put a bid in for the locker-room rights.
Teams that don't know what to do with the ample banner advertising inventory they have on their Web sites are turning to sports-specific Internet advertising sales agencies. Sportsadagency.com, an offshoot of New York-based Tuchman Sports Enterprises, has signed nonexclusive sales agreements with the Seattle Seahawks, Miami Dolphins, Orlando Magic, Dallas Mavericks and Big East and Atlantic 10 conferences. The company reports that it is in discussions with a dozen more major league teams. Beginning Sept. 1, the company will sell sponsorships of individual sites while also packaging some or all of the sites for volume banner advertising purchases.
Meanwhile, American City Studios, a Web sales and design firm that has teamed up with Internet advertising sales agency 24/7 Media to sell ad space on sports sites, recently added the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals and minorleaguebaseball.com to the group of sites it represents, which includes sites for a half dozen more MLB clubs.
Team sites generate traffic as high as 1.5 million page views a month, but few if any are significant revenue sources, as most teams just use banner advertising as a throw-in with larger sponsorship packages.
Just a few months into its Major League Baseball sponsorship, Fleet Financial Group Inc. is proving to be one of the league's most active sponsors. From an entire bus worked up to look like a baseball bat with a Fleet insignia in the middle to billboards that have a picture of home plate and then the word "mortgages," Fleet is doing everything it can to remind consumers that it is an MLB sponsor. A pair of television ads broke in the last two weeks, with Fleet buying prime spots during season finales of hit shows and also translating one into Spanish, marking the company's first Spanish television ad. A local sweepstakes titled "Get in the Game" is being staged at all Massachusetts Fleet bank branches, with tickets to July's All-Star Game at Fenway Park as the grand prize. Boston-based Arnold Communications created the campaign.
